


Whole

by ZeNami



Category: Welcome to Night Vale
Genre: Blood, Cannibalism, Gen, Gore, disturbing imagery
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-09
Updated: 2014-05-09
Packaged: 2018-01-24 02:03:52
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,223
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1587611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ZeNami/pseuds/ZeNami
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cecil's mother once warned him that someday, he would be killed, and it would involve a mirror.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whole

**Author's Note:**

> OK, fair warning, this is the most fucked up thing I have ever written, but I had to get it out of my system. In advance: I'M SO SORRY. Do NOT read on if you're sensitive to graphic descriptions of gore.

It was a little strange, Cecil thought, going into the men's bathroom at the station and not seeing Khoshekh there.

He was just starting to get used to it. Khoshekh was safe at home, of course; for the time being, it was probably better if his baby boy was outside the workplace. Not only was he recovering, but Cecil himself didn't feel particularly safe at work anymore. It was... difficult, being on such sore terms with management. He found it a little tragic how he'd been better at coping with a shapeless, rumbling mass behind a locked door, rather than _people_ who spoke to him face to face.

Maybe it was because they were liars, and _probably_ evil. At least former management was pretty up front about possibly being some kind of bestial abhorition.

Cecil stepped up to the sinks, casting a somewhat nostalgic glance was the countertop where they'd once kept Khoshekh's food. Odd how that cat had sort of become his only ally in the building, aside from the interns, generally. He missed Dana. Wherever she was. It was difficult to reassure himself, when he had to, that she would somehow make it back--that she would be all right. But what else could he do?

Shaking water from his hands, he turned off the faucet, glancing up. A frown creased his lips. The sheet covering the bathroom mirror had come loose, one of the nails missing. He could see a reflective corner.

A familiar uneasiness turned his stomach; a special sort of anxiety that crept up on him in dark places, both figurative and literal. He reached up to pull the sheet over the corner so he could try to catch it on the metal frame of the mirror. He could see a sliver of himself--a palm, a wrist, his hair.

His hair that wasn't quite the right colour. A palm stained a little too much with red.

Cecil stopped. His hand was frozen there, in front of the sliver of reflective glass; he stared at it, at the reflection of it. At the dissonance. Something wasn't...

No, he shouldn't look. Curiosity killed the cat, and he'd had enough of things trying to murder his pet.

And yet.

He didn't know what he was doing; it was stupid, he knew. He remembered his mother's voice; a warning. He should have known better. But it was as if his hand wasn't his own, and he was the one who was the reflection. The red-stained hand moved, touched the reflection of the sheet's edge. Cecil's hand followed it.

It pulled down. The sheet billowed over the sink, and Cecil stared. His reflection stared back with a smile.

_... That was no smile_.

"Hi Cecil." The man's voice was honey-sweet, dripping from shark-like teeth. He stared without eyes; just a black abyss that made Cecil feel as if he were lurching over a crevice into the belly of the earth.

He couldn't speak.

"I told you we would see each other again," Kevin purred, putting his hand against the frame of the mirror. Without thought, Cecil did the same, unable to stop himself from copying his double. "You see, I've been thinking an awful lot about us! An _awful_ lot. And I just _had_ to see you, because I've thought of something so terribly wonderful.

"But you must be here for me to show you properly," he insisted, that sick smile widening more than should have been possible. " _You must_."

Kevin's hands shot through the mirror, fisting bloody fingers into Cecil's collar. Before he could so much as cry out, he was jerked forward--but instead of passing through the glass as Kevin's hands had, he slammed into it, felt it shatter against his nose and his temple as he was pulled through. He screamed in shock and pain as he was pulled bodily over the sink, his own blood in his eye and on his broken glasses as he kicked and struggled to _stay_ , stay in Night Vale, stay where he _belonged_.

But he couldn't.

The place he was dragged into was dark; the room looked like it had once been painted a cheerful pastel yellow, but the paint was chipping, and the walls were streaked with the brownish stains of old blood. Cecil fell bodily to the cracked tile amid shards of glass and groaned, feeling pieces of the broken mirror dig into his arm through the rolled sleeve of his shirt.

He didn't have time to scrabble to his feet, because Kevin was already grabbing him by the back of the vest, hauling him up.

Cecil gasped and fought, trying to grab back at Kevin the moment his feet were back on the ground--but Kevin was fast, clamping a hand down on Cecil's throat with a viper-like swiftness, pinning him to the bathroom sink painfully. "I missed you so much," he laughed, "Let me give you the best hug you've ever had."

Robbed of oxygen, Cecil lashed out, ignoring the pain in his face and his neck in favour of trying to grab Kevin's. He felt his thumb slide into an empty eye socket and his own eyes widened in disgusted horror; Kevin simply laughed.

"You're so forward," he chuckled, leaning in so Cecil's digit slid further into the vacant, bloody space. Cecil whimpered almost noiselessly, face red from strain. He was dizzy. It was getting hard to think--

\--and then Kevin let go. Cecil sucked in air as he fell to his knees, rubbing at his neck, wheezing. But his double wasn't finished. He pulled him up again, forcing him to walk. "Come with me," he said eagerly, "I've repurposed this room! I really must show you. _Ohh_ , this is so exciting!"

It was so dark, and Cecil's eyes, half-blinded still, were having difficulty adjusting to the low light. He felt something collide roughly with his hip, though, and then Kevin was pushing him down by the shoulders, working with speed and efficiency that would have made any Strexcorp employee blush. Cecil squirmed when he felt leather belts tighten over his wrists and his chest; the panic was slow and steady, rearing its head as if through murky water.

"Kevin," he wheezed finally, finding his voice. "What are you doing? Let me go. Let me go, _now_ , let me go--!"

"Ah, _there_ it is!" Kevin spun on his heel in the dark, clapping in delight. "The Voice of Night Vale. Ahh, I must have missed out on so much, not getting to hear your show. Such a shame. I bet Vanessa would have loved it, too. But I'm getting ahead of myself."

Cecil felt a sharp tug as his legs were strapped down, one at a time. Kevin slid back to the rear wall, and flicked on a light.

The room was illuminated by a sickly green LED glow; Cecil could see now that he must have been in the old bathroom of Kevin's station. He remembered this awful place. He'd hoped to never be back here--but his hopes were dashed, as hope tended to be.

He was quickly running out of that, anyway.

"So anyway, I was thinking about us, like I said," Kevin chattered, stepping around Cecil as if he were looking for something. Cecil realized he seemed to be strapped to a break room table, which had been outfitted with metal clamps were the belts were secured; the wood grain was stained heavily with blood. The panic surged and ebbed as he watched his monstrous other move.

"I was thinking about--remember how I said I could feel that we were connected? Not just Night Vale and Desert Bluffs, but you and I, Cecil. I think there's something special about us. How I look into your eyes and I see myself... though maybe different? It's so difficult to explain. Haha."

Kevin leaned over the table until his nose almost touched Cecil's; blood dripped slowly from the eye socket the Night Valian host had had his thumb in. He grimaced at the memory; Kevin didn't seem to notice.

"We're different because you're so... well, _you know_." He laughed. The end of that thought was silent, but understood--the condescending smile on the eyeless man's face said it all. _Imperfect_.

Cecil stared and _did not_ smile, breathing harshly through his nose.

"So I started looking into a few things here and there," Kevin went on. "I wondered... what if we were twins?" He squirmed a bit in delight at the notion, rolling his shoulders, touching Cecil's chest. Cecil flinched. "Imagine that, Cecil! Two sides of the same coin. Two pieces of the most simple jigsaw. And I wondered why it is I feel so intertwined with you. Why I feel you should be part of me. Part of _this_.

"Did you know," Kevin said, tilting his head slowly. His smile faded, replaced with an almost childlike wonder poisoned with the look of a man who had seen too much. "Did you know that sometimes, one twin devours the other in the womb?"

Kevin smiled again. His off-white teeth were so bright in the dim green ember. Dread plummeted into Cecil's gut like a hammer dropped into a lake.

"No," he whispered, both truthfully and in mounting, abject terror.

" _Yes_ ," Kevin laughed, grabbing Cecil's jaw, his uneven fingernails digging into his gums. "It puts me in mind of one of my absolute favourite sayings... better late than never."

" _No--!!_ " Cecil was cut off by his own lurching and outcry as a sharp pain stabbed into his belly; he looked down, eyes glazed, past his frantically heaving chest. Kevin had a kitchen knife buried lovingly between the buttons of his vest, through the soft flesh of his stomach.

"Ggh," he wheezed.

Kevin stroked his cheek with his free hand, humming and smiling. " _Shh, shh_. Something _must_ be done, Cecil. I can't keep on like this, allowing my imperfections to coexist. You _must_ understand."

Cecil stared, trembling faintly. He stared and he wanted to swear, he wanted to fight, he wanted to curse this monster and himself.

He wanted to see Carlos.

That was probably his final coherent thought.

The blade slid through Cecil's stomach, opening him up--he arched and screamed silently, the agony robbing him completely of sense, of any other sensation. He felt air where it shouldn't have been; he saw red stain his clothes, he heard fabric rip amid the sound of his skin and muscle being torn open. He heard Kevin sigh somewhere under the frantic sound of his own gasping, his own desperate cries of pain.

"Oh, Cecil," Kevin groaned, dropping the knife, sliding his hand down into the hot, wet artificial cavity, tearing securing membranes with his fingertips as Cecil twitched and moaned on the table. "You're beautiful on the inside, just as they say. Isn't that wonderful?"

Was it the shock that was allowing Cecil to see this so clearly? He was in so much pain. There was so much blood. His vision was swimming, his forehead pinched, every nerve on fire, _screaming_ , unable to run from it. His knuckles were white against the table, the belts digging into his limbs, holding him down at the shoulders. He could feel his heart, beating out of control, beating and racing and plummeting all at once.

Kevin lifted his hand long enough to lick blood from his fingers--a futile effort, considering he was now stained glistening red up to the elbows. The green light illuminated a grotesque vision of viscera slipping between his double's hands; strings of sinew and torn muscle tissue. Kevin lifted pieces of raw meat to his lips, tongue slipping out over his teeth to lap at them, to swallow them up. He hummed contentedly, empty sockets half-lidded.

Cecil shook his head weakly. No. _God, no._

He jerked bodily as a hand plunged back inside, working its way up slowly. He almost blacked out from the searing torment, every part of him protesting the wrongness of the motion. Kevin leaned over him, and he saw those empty eyes in front of his own, serene where he was shaking.

"Think of how wonderful we could be together," Kevin hummed, hand twisting up inside, thumb and forefinger tracing shuddering lungs underneath dynamic ribs. Cecil was slipping away from him; he had seconds, maybe. His head was tipped back; his eyes saw little but swimming, blackened images, fading. He felt nothing but the pressure of an arm, a hand, where it shouldn't have been, scratching the inside of his chest.

"You're going to be _perfect_ ," Kevin whispered against his double's throat, watching that hot, mad pulse just under his sweat-drenched skin, the smell of salt and iron and bile heavy in their shared air.

Kevin's teeth flashed, clamping deeply into Cecil's tender, exposed throat. Blood flooded his mouth and he groaned, eagerly gulping and swallowing fluid and flesh alike as Cecil convulsed underneath him, so far gone from himself--nothing but the reflexive muscle spasms of a dying man. But Kevin was so happy. He was so _pleased_. Cecil's eyes were as empty as his own; he _knew_ they were the same.

And as he spent the next while searching for his double's heart, alone under the green glow, slowly devouring pieces of his other, Kevin began-- _at last_ \--to feel whole.


End file.
